February Patreon Update

I said I needed to make a Patreon news update, so here's one. This one's mostly bad news, and includes some darker musings (probably for the last time ever).

I don't really need to repost my schedule anymore. It's always at https://www.kdrobertsonbooks.com/schedule now. I update it as I confirm new dates. The main upcoming ones are Spellblade 6 in mid-March (so long as I don't crash and burn) and audiobooks in March and April.

Audio

In good news, a bunch of new audiobooks are out and there's not a huge backlog anymore. Steph did a fantastic job on the Demon's Throne audio, and her performance expanded and improved in the process. This isn't a jab at her, as she was excellent before, but she added lots of little things compared to the earlier audiobooks she narrated for me - stuff like the audio filters in Neural Wraith, the way she did the voices for the Twins, the nuanced accents for the many foreign characters in Demon's Throne (especially the foxes), and stuff like all the giggles and moans. 

After the debacle of the original version I just expected a well-narrated version by Steph, and instead got something truly exceptional. It's a little marred by the audio errors in both 2 and 3, but those can be easily fixed. An entire narration has been an expensive problem to rectify. So I'm truly happy with what I got out of my partnership with Podium and Stephanie.

The Emperor audiobooks also got made and they're also great. As expected, they've done far worse than my more popular books, regardless of Royal Guard's stronger marketing (or maybe Podium is better at marketing than people gave them credit for, and it's just their review game that's weak). I expected to have to shell out a chunk of cash to get these made eventually myself, so this partnership has been good. I don't see myself taking the series past Book 3, however. Even coming back to it this year will be difficult as is.

Spellblade 6

The topic you probably care about the most. Short version: I hit a rut after the first chapters. While I got a lot of great ideas from the comments, it's also clear that they missed the mark and I need to rework them and the start of the book. That's meant redoing the outline for the first third of the story and checking for knock-on effects. The planning post got affected by this, as my efforts shifted to fixing the story over explaining it.

One of the hard parts is that I have a hard deadline if I want the book out in the March, and if I delay then it'll be a big delay. I'm trying to avoid talking about sales, but I'll simply say that Amazon is grumpy with me right now and the falloff after Neural Wraith 2 is far larger than usual. Despite the boogeyman some folks make me out to be, I'm not a big author in the genre (seriously, we're at a point where popular harem books double or triple my reviews effortlessly) and even a few months between releases stings.

Getting the book done will likely result in some nasty crunch and probably an internet sabbatical (I'm due for one, anyway, as I decided to spend more time on reddit at an awful time). I'll be taking a break in March and part of April to recover from it at least, but it's not a great situation.

Anyway, chapters Soon(TM).

AI Shit, Art, and Commentary

I've made a few commentary posts other than my usual book ones over the past several months: two over AI, and one that touched on my feelings about the genre and my future in it.

The AI ones canvassed a lot of my mixed feelings over AI and the ethics involved. While ethics and selfpublishing are basically oxymorons, especially in harem, one of the things I personally value is setting my own line in the sand. I definitely learned a lot about both the technology, myself, and public perception in the process. There was definitely a much softer reception to the AI art the second time compared to the first, after the internet had been saturated with it and the implications had soaked in.

Honestly, I can't really blame people. I'm significantly more negative on the tech myself, outside of playing with it. But the reality is that most people can't even spot bad AI art. Combined with the fact that it's growing in use by a bunch of harem authors (including large ones), and they're aggressively pushing back against detractors, it seems pointless to talk about it. Why debate ethics in a realm devoid of them?

So, yeah, I won't talk about the AI stuff anymore. I'll do a monthly AI art roundup in months where I've generated some interesting stuff to share. Unlike other authors, I have no intention to shift to AI covers. Although I do find the fact that the genre appears to be moving toward them pretty depressing - in a deeply repetitive and shallow genre with so many authors writing purely for the money (and getting upset whenever anybody points this out), the art was often the highlight, even if it was sometimes too horny. If the covers are becoming this boring, but more successful, then it foretells a future where these same authors will switch to AI writing wholesale. And not the assisted kind.

Honestly, it feels pretty naive that I even assumed that AI-assisted writing would be the future for selfpub works now. If the AI art is unassisted, why wouldn't the writing be the same?

That probably counts as a hot take, but, well, I already got a ton of heat for simply expressing my disillusionment with the genre last year. I've been getting veiled swipes ever since and brought up in weird circumstances. While part of me wants to say it proves my point, it mostly just says that a bunch of people really want to kick me out of the genre. Hasn't exactly done wonders for me planning anything new, but I have a bunch of books in my current series to finish off first.

That's a roundabout way of saying that I don't plan to add any commentary outside of the books going forward. My opinions haven't really changed, and if anything, have solidified since. I expect this to be a quiet year while I try to get myself into a better position for the future.

Because, ultimately, there is always a future to deal with. I've always been good at rolling with the punches, so long as I don't drown. I expect this to be the last time I'm this candid about some of these topics, as they're tiring to think about, they get spread, and then people shit on me about them.

Anyway, that's the depressing stuff over. I need to get back to writing. Chapters Soon(TM)